Some cool facts about photo presets

[Egg Bramhill]

Interesting Frances. It also helps if you use named colours in your video example. It makes it very quick to change the colours without the need to edit the filter.

I attach a couple I reversed engineered files using the supplied presets (no named colours).

[Egg Bramhill]

Another couple:

[Egg Bramhill]

And a final two:

[Egg Bramhill]

Really is the last one, I promise

[angelize]

Some nice effects there Egg The named colours suggestion is a great one. Presets can be a great starting point, for example you can set up layers with textures photo settings layers etc then once applied to your photo you can do what you want to the layers to create your masterpiece.

A quick example using Egg's cracked preset. After applying the preset I set the transparency of the cracked overlay layer down to 0 then used the eraser tool to brush it out where I didn't want it such as the eye, nostril, lips and eyebrow. Then a quick ctrl +k to clone the cracked overlay and this new layer I set to softlight and adjusted to suit a voila a cracked skin effect in just a few mins.

[RKissane]

Frances,

I am trying to wrap my head around the way these files are saved.

When you first make the file, you setup the presets on a photo. Now when you save the file as a preset does the orignal photo get removed?

I did not understand what the need was to make a bit map copy of the photo with the preset applied, could you explain that a little more?

Thank you,
Ray

[angelize]

Hi Ray,

Ok first, when you save your preset the photo is saved in the preset file. If you double click a preset file to open it the file will open and you will see your original photogroup containing the original photo and any extra layers you set up just as you saved it. If you drag and drop the preset onto another photo the program sees the _xaraphotopreset part of the file name and it applies the settings and any other layers contained within the photo group to the new photo so basically only the photo is replaced. Some of the presets I have published on the Xara Marketplace have multiple layers of settings and textures and all come across just fine.

Second, as I explained in the video when you make a preset it works best to use a square photo and I use the same size as Xara uses for the presets supplied with the program, 800 x800 pixels. In the video I was using a clipview to keep my size exact and that clipview needs to be flattened before creating the photo preset, which is what the bitmap copy is about

Since making the video I discovered that you can use the photo clipping tool to clip your photo to a square and eliminate the need for the bitmap copy.